Moral dilemmas – the hard topics, continued
We cannot honor them if we don’t engage in the same debates, the same deliberations, as they did. If we “honor” them without engaging, we’ve created pedestals and haloes, nothing more.
From Leaflet III on, we see the students steadily moving away from the written word, thinking about – even if not yet practicing – a form of resistance that advocated the violent overthrow of Hitler’s government.
In response to his interrogator’s “why” question on February 20, 1943, Hans Scholl replied, “I am of the opinion that it was not the majority of the German people who failed politically in the time between 1918 – 1933, and above all in 1933; rather it was that class of people in a nation that should lead a nation politically, [namely] the intelligentsia. Although a class of educated persons and specialists – in all spheres of intellectual life – was evolving into full bloom, it was precisely these people who were incapable of answering even the simplest political questions.
“This is the only way to explain that mass movements with their simple slogans were able to out-shout every deeper philosophical undertaking. I felt that it was high time to seriously point out the national-political duties that this part of middle-class [Germany] was obligated to. If the development of foreign policy had initially taken a more peaceable course, I perhaps would not have been faced with the alternative: Should I commit high treason or not? Rather, I would have attempted to mobilize the positive forces within this nation in such a manner that they would have outflanked everything negative and led to a national form that would be worth striving for.”
This tracks well with the actions of White Rose students and the adults who would later join their work. Peace, positive forces, ability to answer simple political questions, had these been present in German society in 1942, they would not have had to escalate to effect change.
Alexander Schmorell responded to the same “why” question more pithily, yet as directly. “At that time, we saw so-called passive resistance and the commission of acts of sabotage as the only means of shortening the war.”
That was February 25, 1943, his reply to his interrogator. Although he used the term “passive resistance,” Alex clearly supported aggressive, violent actions against the Nazi government.
Their considerations were strengthened during the farewell party at Manfred Eickemeyer’s studio the night before the student soldiers left for the Russian front. Eickemeyer repeated the stories of war crimes he had personally witnessed or that he had heard about from reliable sources. His words were well-known to Hans, Sophie, Alex, and Christl, but fresh and horrible for everyone else.
Alex declared that when they were on the Russian front, he intended to behave “passively,” not supporting the war effort. This simple statement sparked a controversy so furious, that some chose to listen and not participate in the debate.
Because – the debate took an unexpected turn. Kurt Huber, Hans Scholl, Manfred Eickemeyer all disagreed with Alex. Huber assumed that Hans Scholl supported his opinion when Hans stated that it was precisely because of the crimes Eickemeyer told them about that they must be active, and not passively resist.
Huber’s assumption was wrong. Hans Scholl was not suggesting that resistance was not the proper response. He thought passive resistance no longer would work. Alex continued to argue for passive resistance, what we would call “quiet quitting” in 2024. Hans thought the war machine needed to be stopped.
Although the students outside the leaflet-producing circle were confused and overwhelmed by the intensity of the debate, it was one they would never forget. Over the summer, whether on the front lines or working in armaments factories in Germany, the words from that evening’s “festivities” reverberated and worked on consciences.
In November 1942 when the student soldiers were home from the front lines, Alex and Hans traveled to Stuttgart to speak to Eugen Grimminger about supporting their efforts financially. In the cautious phase of the conversation, they told the accountant about their leaflet campaign, greatly exaggerating its scope and reach. A perennial weakness of White Rose resistance, this scope creep, speaking of things as done-deals when they were merely under consideration.
And yet, scope creep grants us insights to their thinking, what they genuinely wanted to accomplish.
In this case, they told Grimminger that they had undertaken a wildly successful leaflet campaign, one that had already inspired a grass roots movement in Munich dedicated to justice for all. They needed money from Grimminger to travel throughout Germany, assessing the mood at other universities, recruiting large numbers of students to join their work.
And for the first time, we hear them talk out loud about the active resistance they envisioned. These large numbers of students? Not just for production and dissemination of leaflets. No, they were to be resistance fighters. Perhaps unifying diverse political groups under a single umbrella, Communists, socialists, democrats, federalists… Perhaps a putsch. Perhaps involving bloodshed.
They had to quickly walk back the last part of their spiel, since unbeknownst to them, Grimminger was Buddhist and adhered to principles of nonviolence – even in the face of the extreme violence practiced by the National Socialists. Hans Scholl assured Grimminger that their primary goal was distribution of leaflets. Grimminger remained skeptical, but nonetheless agreed to support their cause.
Willi Graf – now a full-fledged participant in White Rose resistance – found inspiration in Michael Brink’s Don Quixote. His sister Anneliese remembered that his favorite passage from that novel was, “Let us put our hand to the work, because there is danger in hesitating. ... It is my duty and occupation to go to and fro in the world and make the crooked straight and right injustice. ... There is a time to attack and retreat, sometimes one must wait for the right opportunity. But now we must either show our colors or die, tertium non datur [there is no third option].”
Anneliese Knoop-Graf said her brother understood this as an unambiguous call to resistance.
After the disastrous debate on February 9, 1943, the debate that ripped apart the very fabric of the friendships that had held White Rose students together, Willi Graf went to Lenggries, south of Munich, to talk to Johannes Maassen. Maassen’s works had long appealed to Willi Graf, as he called out corruption in Germany and in the Catholic Church, despite his love for both. Maassen knew Pater Alfred Delp and Michael Brink personally. Willi Graf wanted an introduction to those men.
Because they practiced active resistance.
Pater Delp was arrested and executed for his role in the July 20, 1944 resistance. Michael Brink was also denounced and arrested in 1944 and sent first to Ravensbrück, then to Sachsenhausen. Brink survived the war, dying in 1947 from tuberculosis apparently contracted in the concentration camps.
But I am getting ahead of myself, because Willi Graf did not arrive at the “join Pater Delp” camp immediately upon returning to Germany from the Russian front. Especially for Willi Graf, that transformation took time and deep thought.
Willi Graf took an unusual step that I have not found with any other student: Over Christmas 1942, he spoke to his very-Nazi father about resistance. Gerhard Graf advised his son to keep himself out of such things, pointing out the compromises he’d had to make to stay afloat. Willi told his father that someone had to give a visible sign against Nazi tyranny, and he would do so, even if it “cost him his head.”
Willi’s friend Hermann Krings confirmed postwar that Willi Graf indeed sought active resistance.
Apparently Willi Graf was not shy about expressing this opinion among friends he trusted. The Bollinger brothers recalled that that same Christmas, they decided that both passive and active resistance were necessary to stop Hitler and the Nazi murderers. And that active resistance included… assassinating Hitler.
Willi Bollinger was tasked with procuring weapons from wounded soldiers brought to the military hospital where he worked. No one would notice that their weapons were missing. That step would be easy. Willi Bollinger also volunteered to use his access to military forms and stamps to forge documents they would need.
Despite brave words that Christmas, the two Bollingers plus Willi Graf would later take a step back to consider the ramifications of their brash plan. They still thought it would be the politically right thing to do. But would it be morally correct? Could they square these deliberations with doctrines they still believed? They had long since moved past the roadblock of Romans 13. But - Stealing weapons was still theft. Assassination was still murder.
I wish Willi Graf (or the Bollingers) had better documented how they got from “let’s do it” to “is this right” and back again to “let’s do it.” Their thoughtful, sincere words could have been helpful to us today.
Because Willi Graf was leaving White Rose resistance not because he thought resistance was not right. He was leaving White Rose resistance because he wanted to do something that would change Germany, and he believed leaflets would never get the result they – their country! – needed.
Hubert Furtwängler said Hans Scholl would talk about shooting Hitler on sight if he met him on the street in Munich. Alexander Schmorell also intended to kill Hitler if ever the opportunity arose, perhaps even in his favorite restaurant, the Osteria. Sophie Scholl told Susanne Hirzel something similar. Although Sophie did worry a bit about the morality of assassination, a topic she and Willi Graf mulled over together in mid-January 1943.
“We came to the conclusion that even a Christian person may kill in a battle against an enemy,” Sophie recalled during an interrogation, “because the fighter is not responsible for his actions as an individual. He is merely acting as a dependent member of a superior power.”
A mere few weeks later, disillusioned by the ineffectiveness of the White Rose leaflet campaign, Willi Graf and Gustel Sahm met with Professor Kurt Huber to discuss the notion of “storming Gestapo headquarters [in Berlin] to signal the beginning of general resistance.” And shortly after that, Willi headed south to Lenggries to talk to Johannes Maassen about an introduction to Pater Delp. And active resistance.
The day of the arrests – February 18, 1943 – Willi Graf met with his cousins the Luibles in Pasing, asking for names of reliable students he could recruit for his resistance plans. And Alexander Schmorell intended to head to Russia as a civilian, so he could join Russian partisans and fight Nazis militarily. For both of these young men, passive resistance had wasted too much time and energy, with nothing to show for it.
They wanted to end the war. And Willi and Alex reasoned that end could come only with force.
I told you this is hard for us in 2024 to consider. On the one hand, we clap and cheer for the brave men of the July 20, 1944 resistance who tried to murder Hitler. My first German teacher was daughter of one of those men. After the war, his life and courage was celebrated in a documentary. Sitting here eighty years later, there’s little argument that they were on the right side of history.
Whether in a serious documentary or in a less-serious show like Hogan’s Heroes, we are happy every time an armaments factory goes up in flames, or a grenade lands on the seat next to a Nazi general. And explodes.
But this is now 2024. We’re a little over three years away from an attempted insurrection in our own nation’s capital, an insurrection when people used violence to challenge the results of a lawful election. Violence that was meant to intimidate elected officials. Violence that desecrated the People’s House, a building and an institution that Americans hold dear.
And those attempting to overthrow our laws, our democracy, cloaked themselves in “1776,” in the revolution that birthed our country. In a revolution that was steeped in informed dissent, knowledge of specific crimes, specific injustices that cried out for redress.
There is a clear historical line between the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the failed revolutions in Germany in 1848, the successful overthrow of German nobility in 1919, and White Rose resistance. In every case, there was informed dissent that was ignored by the ruling class, with no redress through normal political channels.
January 6, 2021 insurrectionists who try to claim this as their birthright, their raison d’état, clearly do not understand the nature of resistance. Their actions were not only illegal, but outside the boundaries of reason and logic.
I am grateful that we do not have to discuss this on a partisan level, that many from their own “party” have chosen to come down on the side of law. We need rational political debates in this country, not defecating in the halls of government. We need sound legislative initiatives, not people peeing on desks and paperwork to demonstrate contempt and little else. We need all hands on deck, not a hangman’s noose for the Vice President who defied his president’s orders.
For me, however, the violence of January 6, 2021 – and shortly before it, the violence associated with the Black Lives Matter movement – was a wakeup call.
When is violence justified? When is an insurrection not an insurrection, but rather a legitimate response to a despot? Who decides who is a despot, and who is merely a strong leader? What is informed dissent versus response to propaganda? Does it require the passage of time before we know what was propaganda and what is fact?
If you say that evil leaders should be assassinated, who gets to decide when a leader crosses that invisible line in the sand from simply atrocious and narcissistic, to evil? If you say no leader should ever be assassinated, what do you say to people living in Germany between 1933-1945 who saw crimes beyond comprehension committed in the name of their country, with no consequences to the Commander-in-Chief?
If you follow Gandhi’s philosophy of nonviolent protest, how do you address the violence that has plagued India since, well, since forever, as Muslims and Hindus have relentlessly killed one another over religious beliefs and practices? Does nonviolence apply only against foreign powers, and not with regards to domestic disputes?
If you believe real change requires violence to succeed, where do you stand with regards to change through legislation, exhausting every means possible before arming?
I don’t have answers.
These questions come from facing up against the hard, hard lessons left for us by these White Rose students and the adults who joined their cause.
We cannot honor them if we don’t engage in the same debates, the same deliberations, as they did. If we “honor” them without engaging, we’ve created pedestals and haloes, nothing more.
Oh, this matters!
© 2024 Denise Elaine Heap. Please contact us for permission to quote. To order digital version of White Rose History, Volume II, click here. Digital version of White Rose History, Volume I is available here.